Missing Games at QuakeCon

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It was a quiet year for third parties at id's annual gaming bash in Texas

By Jason Ocampo

Is the economy weighing down on QuakeCon? Perhaps, and that might explain the absence of upcoming third-party games at the annual gaming bash in Dallas, Texas this weekend. Last year, QuakeCon featured a number of upcoming games, such as World in Conflict from Sierra and Left 4 Dead from Valve. This year there wasn't much, and while Activision was there in addition to industry heavyweights Intel, ATI, and Dell, there really wasn't anything new in terms of console or PC games.

Perhaps the most glaring absence was World in Conflict: Soviet Assault, the upcoming console version of last year's smash strategy game. (Soviet Assault will also be released as a downloadable campaign for the PC version.) The absence was noted because the game was technically a sponsor for QuakeCon, with the World in Conflict: Soviet Assault logo showing up on various banners around the show. However, with the news last week that Activision Blizzard had dropped the game meant that its appearance had to be cancelled.

Quite a number of people were also expecting Left 4 Dead, Valve's highly-awaited cooperative multiplayer shooter of humans against zombies, but it was nowhere to be found on the first day of QuakeCon. With the game coming out on November 4, this was a perfect showcase for Valve to show it off.

EA was content to basically show off Rage during the press conference on Thursday, but the company didn't have a booth at the show this year. There was an EA-branded id Mobile booth, though, and it was mainly showing off Wolfenstein RPG for mobile handsets.

Meanwhile, many of the games that were on display had already been released, such as Guitar Hero III, Assassin's Creed, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Activision did have the trailer for the upcoming Wolfenstein game running, as well as a bevy of black-clad booth babes armed with replica MP-40s to guard it, but that was about it.